She sat down again by my bedside, and communed with herself--sometimes fixing an abstracted gaze upon me, sometimes looking across me at the very spot where in the shadow beside my bed I bad seemed to see the words of the Psalmist's curse written in letters of fire. At last she said quietly, 'Henry, I will undertake this commission of yours.' 'Dear mother!' I exclaimed in my delight. 'I will undertake it,' pursued my mother in the same quiet tone, 'on one condition.' 'Any condition in the world, mother. There is nothing I will not do, nothing I will not sacrifice or suffer, if you will only aid me in saving this poor girl. Name your condition, mother; you can name nothing I will not comply with.' 'I am not so sure of that, Henry. Let me be quite frank with you. I do not wish to entrap you into making an engagement you cannot keep. You have corroborated to-night what I half suspected when I saw you talking to the girl in the churchyard; there is a very vigorous flirtation going on between you and this wretched man's daughter.' 'Flirtation? 'I said, and the incongruity of the word as applied to such a passion as mine did not vex or wound me; it made me smile. 'Well, for her sake, I hope it is nothing more,' said my mother. 'In view of the impassable gulf between her and you, I do for her sake sincerely hope that it is nothing more than a flirtation.' 'Pardon me, mother,' I said, 'it was the word "flirtation" that made me smile.' 'We will not haggle about words, Henry; give it what name may please you, it is all the same to me. But flirtations of this kind will sometimes grow serious, as the case of Percy Aylwin and the Gypsy girl shows. Now, Henry, I do not accuse you of entertaining the mad idea of really marrying this girl, though such things, as you know, have been in our family. But you are my only son, and I do love you, Henry, whatever may be your opinion on that point; and, because I love you, I would rather, far rather, be a lonely, childless woman in the world, I would far rather see you dead on this floor, than see you marry Winifred Wynne.' 'Ah! mother, the cruelty of this family pride has always been the curse of the Aylwins.' 'It seems cruel to you now, because you are a boy, a generous boy. You think it the romantic, poetic thing to elevate a low girl to your own station--perhaps even to show your superiority to conventions by marrying the daughter of the miscreant who has desecrated your own father's tomb. But, Henry, I know the race to which you and I belong. In five years' time--in three years, or perhaps in two--you will thank me for this; you will say: "My mother's love was not cruel, but wise."' 'Oh, mother!' I said, '_any_ condition but that.'